


Good Science

by psocoptera



Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28125429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: While Kipo and friends go exploring, Song and Lio have an interesting encounter.
Relationships: Lio Oak/Song Oak
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Good Science

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoVeryAverageMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoVeryAverageMe/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide SoVeryAverageMe! Kipo was such a great show! The characters! The world! I hope you enjoy this little look at Kipo's family (old and new).
> 
> Many thanks to my betas for their help.

"I'd really rather you didn't," Lio said.

Song looked back and forth between her husband and her daughter. They both looked taken aback, like they had been equally caught off-guard. Behind Kipo, Wolf and Benson traded glances, a quick conversation conducted entirely by eyes. They both shifted a little closer to Kipo.

"It's definitely not safe, so... it's out of the question," Lio said. He nodded sharply, a signal for decisiveness. Song waited for Kipo to mirror him, to drop her gaze or her chin to show agreement, but she kept her head level.

"With all due respect," Benson started, and Song winced a little. That was never good, although he was smiling an appeasement smile. "Of course you and Kipo need to... figure this out? But the rest of us weren't really asking so much as we were, uh, letting you know."

"It's not safe for any of you," Lio said, crossing his arms.

Wolf rolled her eyes. "Our call," she said tersely. She put one hand down onto Mandu's head.

"That's right," Dave chimed in. "If we want to - what are we doing again? whatever it was - we will not be turned aside or obstructed in our mission. But seriously, what was it."

Nobody answered, although Mandu snuffled at him supportively.

"Dad," Kipo said, after a moment, after a subtle barely-there check-in with Benson and Wolf, eyes to one side then the other. "I'm not trying to rebel or something. But we do need more supplies, and it would be good to know more about what's out there, so foraging up the coast makes a lot of sense. And you know my friends will be safer if I'm along. Please don't make me stay behind."

Lio frowned. Song could tell that he was reconsidering. He had thought he had been approached by a group of kids seeking permission. But actually it was just Kipo who wanted permission, and Song wasn't even entirely sure it was fair to make her need it. Their daughter had a better understanding of the risks of the surface world than they did, at this point, and she was better equipped to deal with them, at least now that Song was human again. And the way the conversation played out, the permission she was asking for was _permission to be with her friends_ , and that felt wrong in a queasy way Song couldn't quite articulate. Like a limb bending the wrong way. Like it should never have even been a question.

Lio turned his head and looked right at her. "Honey," he said. "What do you think about Kipo going exploring."

Song panicked. "That sounds like fun!" she said. "Should we pack everybody a lunch?"

*  
"I'm sorry!" Song said into Lio's shoulder. "I didn't mean to not have your back, I mean, I meant to have your back, I just, they were all standing there, _together_ \- "

"It's okay," Lio said, patting her hand, where she was holding on to his arm. He had to reach across himself to do it, so it was sort of like he was hugging himself. Song used to do that back when she was the monkey. She had more arms then. Sometimes now she missed them.

"They'll probably be fine," Lio went on. He did not sound at all convinced of this. Song couldn't tell whether he was trying to reassure her, or himself. It was bad science, revising the hypothesis after starting the experiment, even if the experiment was _their daughter_ and the hypothesis was _definitely not safe_.

She considered asking him to explain the _definitely_. Lio had thirteen years of parenting experience that she had missed, after all.  
But he also had thirteen years of memories biasing him. When he said something was dangerous, did he mean it was dangerous for a teenaged megajaguar, or did he mean it would have been dangerous for a younger, smaller, merely human version of Kipo that he still saw sometimes when he looked at her? Was he factoring in the loyalty and ingenuity of her friends?

"It is a smart idea to start doing some reconnaissance," Lio said. "I'm curious about the world beyond Las Vistas too! And what could be out there that's a match for our girl. Or the four of them."

"Five," Song said, meaning Mandu, and Lio said, "Right, five, Mandu." He smiled another one of those brittle, forced smiles. Song's chin was hooked over his shoulder and she could feel the tension in his neck and back. He was saying the words, but he didn't really believe them, or he did but was still bothered by something. But maybe she shouldn't ask him to explain. She had already undermined his judgment. She didn't want to undermine his self-reassurance.

She thought about Kipo somewhere up the coast, with friends, packed lunches, bedrolls, canteens, emergency flares, and the ability to turn colossal.

"They'll be okay," Song said. Draped against Lio's back, Song could feel the deep breaths he was taking, slow and measured. She tried to match them.

*

"Hey, Kipo's back!"

Song set down the draft of a sanitation plan as soon as she heard the commotion. She was already on her feet when one of the Raccoons - she didn't recall their name - came skidding into her makeshift office.

"Hey, Kipo's back, but she's weird! You might want to come down here!"

Song hustled. It had only been two nights of the planned three - was someone hurt? Had something happened?

She turned the corner, and she could see them down the street, in the common area they were calling "the plaza". For a second, they were unmistakeable - Kipo's pink hair, Wolf's cloud of black, Benson in white, Dave's green, Mandu's blue. And then, even from a distance, they were _wrong_. Wolf turned - Kipo took a step - Benson lifted his arm - and none of it was right at all.

Song ran faster. Were they _all_ hurt, to be moving so strangely? She skidded into the plaza, where a crowd of humans and a few mutes had made a wary semicircle around the returning explorers.

Nobody looked her way at all, not even Kipo.

Or rather, not even the thing pretending to be Kipo. Because it clearly wasn't. The coloration and shape were pretty much perfect. Frozen in a photo, Song might even have been fooled. But nothing about the way it moved was right, from the angle of its head to the balance of its weight on its feet. The rest of them were no better.

Song shouldered her way to the front. "Okay," she said. "Who are you, and where is my daughter?"

"Oh, thought so," she heard somewhere behind her.

The not-Kipo put its hands on its hips, mirroring Song. It didn't say anything. The other doppelgängers shifted until they were all focused on Song too.

"Well?" Song asked. She couldn't turn back into the monkey, but she tried to channel the monkey, tried to imagine herself towering and terrifyingly strong.

She lifted her hands, and all at once the not-Kipo and her not-friends _flashed_ , white and orange and brown, garish and jarring, and then vanished. Song blinked.

"Uh," Jamack said. "Are we just... letting them leave?"

*

"And then they turned invisible," Lio repeated dubiously.

"Yes," Song said. "Invisible to most of us. But their camouflage must be optimized for the human-visible or ultraviolet spectrum, because Jamack could still see them when none of the mammals could."

"Because frogs can see in the infrared," Lio said.

"Presumably," Song said. "He said that once they started moving, they didn't keep the human forms at all, they were like - " She tried to make the same gesture he had made, a twisting, wiggling hand motion. "By the time he tried to grab one - you know," - she stuck out her tongue - "they were halfway back to the water. He said it squirted through his tongue like it wasn't even solid. And tasted salty." She made a face. Science was all about exploring the unknown, but she was glad she didn't have to grapple it with her tongue.

"So... octopuses?" Lio said.

"I think so. I'm pretty sure I remember reading something about octopuses imitating other animals," Song said. "I don't remember if it was for hunting or hiding."

"Hunting?!" Lio said, too loud. "And we know they've seen Kipo." He put his hand over his mouth.

"Wait, wait," Song said. "I don't think they were here to hunt. The way they all came into the plaza, they way they clumped together... that wasn't any kind of hunting formation." She closed her eyes. Something about the way they had grouped themselves... she tried to flip back and forth in her mind's eye between the doppelgängers and their real counterparts, gathered to talk to Lio.

"If they weren't just mimicking them individually," she said, thinking through it, "But were mimicking the group, Kipo's pack, _as_ a pack, then... I think Kipo is totally fine."

"How can you know that," Lio asked.

"The group body language," Song said. "The way they were spaced, the way they positioned themselves... I know what Kipo looks like with her friends when they're relaxed, and I know what they look like on the defensive, and the octopuses were definitely doing the first one."

"So what do you think they were doing here?" Lio asked.

"I don't know," Song said. "They mimic, right? Maybe they just... saw that a group of us had come up into their territory, so they sent a group of them down into our territory." She thought a little bit more. "You know what we should do..."

*

"They're coming," one of the Umlaut Snäkes hissed. Song had asked them to keep an eye on the waterfront for the octopuses, on the assumption that, like Jamack, they might be able to see them through their camouflage.

"Okay!" Song said. "Places!"

She stood opposite Lio at the center of the plaza. Asher stood opposite Dahlia. Jamack stood alone. Song started to move her arms, slowly so that Lio could mirror her. She could see Asher and Dahlia doing something similar next to them.

 _Look_ , she thought, as hard as she could. _We can mimic too. We can find a way to talk to each other. Weird and new doesn't have to mean scary._

In the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker in front of Jamack, and then a mirror-Jamack. Slowly, the two Jamacks started to move in parallel.

*

The real Kipo returned that night, after the octopuses had returned to the sea. In the end, it had been a quiet encounter. It seemed like they might be a long way from actually being able to talk to each other. The five octopuses had tried being Kipo and co. again, and then they had tried being the five of them on the plaza. Song had split up with Lio and done a slow mirror dance with another Song while Lio danced with another Lio. The octopuses had liked Asher and Dahlia best and had all taken on the shape of one or the other of them before they left.

When the real Kipo came back, it was just in time for dinner, and she bounded in as a jaguar, lowering her head to let her friends dismount. The real Kipo had a lot to say about Anachronism Lizards, who lived in a kingdom up the coast holding feasts and tournaments. The real Kipo hadn't seen any octopuses and couldn't guess when they might have seen her. The real Kipo hugged Song, and hugged Lio, and said "thank you for letting me go".

*

"So they were fine," Lio said.

He was lying with his head in Song's lap. It was late, and the settlement, the town, whatever it was they were building, was quiet.

"They were fine," Song agreed.

"And even the weirdest thing they ran into was harmless," Lio went on.

"They seem to be," Song said, assuming Lio meant the octopuses.

Lio sighed. "This might sound dumb. I think I looked at Wolf, and Benson, and I thought, hey, here are kids without a parent, they need someone to be their parent, I need to, you know, do parent things. Set rules. But they're not looking for a parent, they've been out here all this time without one. But if they don't need a parent, and Kipo is one of them, where does that leave me? Us? And - it's not like my record is even that good, I mean, Hugo - " He closed his eyes.

That was a lot, and Song wasn't sure where to start with it. "You did a great job with Kipo," she said.

"Past tense?" Lio asked.

"No! I think we." She stopped, trying to think through the words. "I think we are doing a good job. You know, I missed so much, and I don't know what I'm doing, but I think we just need to be like the octopuses."

"Uh, say what?" Lio said. "The octopuses? Be creepy shape-stealers?"

"They weren't creepy," Song said. "Especially today, when they came back. I think they're trying to figure out how to connect with us, where they fit in with us. I felt like that when I came back, at first, like I was just copying human behavior, like I had to... watch everything closely to make sense of it."

"Oh, honey," Lio said. He sat up and put his arms around her. "No, you're nothing like that, you can't compare yourself to -"

"No," Song interrupted. "I mean, it's fine. I like that they came back. I like that we get to keep trying. We haven't figured out yet how to talk to octopuses and maybe we haven't quite figured out how to parent a teenager."

"Giiiiant teenager," Lio said.

"I know it's easier for me," Song said. "Because I didn't have to - they were already her anchor, so I just had to... find a mom-shaped place. You had a dad-shaped place but then the shape changed."

"It's a good thing the octopus is so adept at squeezing into any space," Lio said, wrapping his arms more tightly around Song and ducking his head under her chin.

"Oh no, am I going to regret this whole metaphor?" she murmured.

"For decades," Lio said.

Song closed her eyes, and thought about Kipo with her friends around her. They all fit together somehow, and they would just keep on running experiments and figuring it out. That was good science, and it had never failed her yet.

**Author's Note:**

> The real-life mimic octopus has a close relative called the wunderpus that also imitates many different animals. So I felt like they belonged in this world somewhere. :)


End file.
